


Syngeneic

by wreathed



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood, Blow Jobs, Canon Compliant, Cockblocking, Hand Jobs, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 11:39:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5827240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I was already taking apart your mind,” Hannibal reminds him. “But you have put it back together most admirably. I did not break you. I improved you.”</i>
</p><p>Filling in the space between the fall and the leg.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks go to [halotolerant](http://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant), my beta and sounding board, and [Poose](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Poose/pseuds/Poose), my beta and remover of Anglicisms. All remaining mistakes my own.

The ocean has begun to fill him from the inside when Will briefly envisions a stark, momentary image of himself and Hannibal lying side by side on the sea bed, water picking over their bones. Stripped of all identifiers but the fact they were together. 

Strong arms pull him upwards. The salt stings his wounds.

*

Will opens his eyes to the sight of a boat’s spacious cabin, dawn light filtering through the unobstructed windows. He is in a double bed, bloodied bed linen beneath him. He is naked from the waist up, his pants loosened at the top, his belt removed, his feet bare. He has been bandaged.

His head swims with pain.

“Good morning, Will,” says a voice that would sharpen him if he wasn’t so dulled by a wild ache. Will turns his head to the side to see Hannibal. He has a pale look to him, and is sitting propped up on a chair. 

“Are you alright?” he asks Hannibal. It is hard to focus, so he tries to concentrate on Hannibal, not because he is easily understandable, but because he is there. Hannibal is here. Neither of them are dead. He has not killed Hannibal, therefore he must have become him. Yet Hannibal is staring straight at him, and the room is bereft of mirrors. 

“I will be. As will you.”

Hannibal is here. They are sailing… somewhere.

“Are we returning to Florence?” Will asks, eyes flicking back to the bedroom’s ceiling, and he is quite aware he sounds hopeful. There is no-one else here to see how he reacts but Hannibal, and so he does not have to pretend.

“I wish we could. But it will be one of the first places Jack will go, if he suspects we have survived. We will not be crossing the Atlantic at all.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the middle of winter and, from the moment you joined me on this vessel, I valued my life.”

There’s something important there, but he’s too tired to react to it. Will can feel his thoughts fading, rushing from his grasp again.

“Is it safe for me to fall asleep?”

“Yes.”

“There's still so much I don't know about you.”

“Nevertheless, you know more about me than anyone else does.”

“‘Don't be greedy?’”

“Don't be foolish. I will draw the curtains.”

Hannibal does so; hand grasped to his injured stomach, he moves with little of his usual grace.

Will’s eyes close.

*

For Hannibal, he had sailed to Portugal first, white sail raised and ready to fall, a shroud come any storm. After a day and a night spent in a tiny village almost empty in the off-season to rest and gain supplies, he had made for the strait of Gibraltar and the shorter, warmer voyage to wherever he could land around Livorno.

This time, there were two of them, and they did not have to stop.

*

They are on a small motor yacht, Hannibal informs him. It belongs to him. The bedroom doesn’t feel like Hannibal’s domain; the decoration is too generic.

“How long have you owned this?”

“Since the time of your incarceration, I decided that it might be beneficial to purchase it to go along with the house,” Hannibal says. “I had just begun the process of arranging renovation – I believe the contractors had got as far as ripping out the fittings of the other bedrooms – when you made my nature known and I had to flee.”

“Why didn’t you take this back then?”

“There is no reason to not take a flight when circumstance allows,” Hannibal says. “It is a far quicker method of travel. Besides, Bedelia is no sailor.”

Will imagines Bedelia slipping out of Hannibal’s arms to drown, bubbles of air rising from her slack mouth, as he thinks over Hannibal’s words.

“Did you buy this with _me_ in mind?” _We could disappear now. Tonight._

“Yes and no. There was a plane ticket with your name on once, if that answers your question.” 

Both their bodies ache all over, yet Hannibal still must poke over old wounds.

“You tried to kill me,” Hannibal says. “Again. Although at least this time you were present.”

Will slowly shakes his head and gives a mirthless, laughter-like sound. “If I had wanted to kill you, I would have done it. You made sure I was perfectly capable of doing so.”

“To kill Dolarhyde,” Hannibal says. “You needed my co-operation.”

“I think I could have threatened and manipulated you to the extent that I would have had your co-operation to die. After all, I learned from the best. But I didn’t want you to. Not that day, and not now, and perhaps not ever again.”

Hannibal rises from his chair and steps closer, sitting on the edge of the bed instead, and looks at Will in what Will has come to recognize as quiet wonder. “What was your plan, Will? What would follow our tumble from the bluff?”

“I said I didn’t want to kill you. I didn’t say I knew how to keep you alive. But I knew you would take care of that, and I knew you would carry me along with you so that I lived too.”

“We’re conjoined,” Hannibal says, pronouncing the second word in the same tone that Will once had, years ago.

Hannibal turns and lies down, so that he is facing Will on the bed. He resumes their configuration from the top of the cliff and Will’s heart beats faster from Hannibal’s proximity, the light touch of the pads of his fingers. In silence, they embrace each other until Will falls asleep again, and they go nowhere but where the boat takes them.

*

The outside still draws a blank for Will’s orientation, the same blue-grey sky and water. But it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long when he pushes himself to sit up in bed, Hannibal lying awake beside him. Hannibal looks pleased at Will’s consciousness and he is soon rising from the bed in short, uncomfortable-looking movements. 

When he returns, he is holding two bowls of broth.

“You’ve brought me chicken soup,” Will says.

“It’s from a can this time. You might actually like it.”

“Sometimes chicken soup is just chicken soup.”

They sit in silence for a while as they first wait for the soup to cool, then consume it.

“I see you have attended to your own injuries,” Will says once he has finished his serving. “You have made food. You must be plotting the course and steering when necessary. Name something I can do.”

“We have the same blood type,” Hannibal informs him. From the foot of the bed, he picks up a leather doctor’s bag with a flourish. “If I am careful– ”

“Which you are,” says Will.

“Which I am,” says Hannibal with a tiny smile. “I can go to the galley’s second, concealed refrigerator, take out a bag of my own red blood cells I have put aside there in case there was any eventuality for which I would need them, and give you a transfusion. It should be quite straightforward.”

“You can nourish me.”

“In this way, for now,” Hannibal says. “In the future, hopefully in others.”

The shared bed had previously not seemed significant – they have been close before and, in any case, Hannibal told Will (unless Will had dreamed it) that this was the only bed on the whole boat. Now it did feel significant, and Will does not feel like he can hold himself against Hannibal again for a third time without it descending into something more.

“I asked you to name something _I_ can do,” Will says. “Don’t reserve what supply you have just for me.”

“Your presence is enough, Will,” Hannibal replies firmly. “I must insist. After all, you are my guest.”

Briefly, Will inclines his head. “On the understanding that you take my blood for yourself after I have benefited from yours.” 

“Once your condition has improved,” Hannibal says in a low, level voice, before leaving the bedroom for the galley. Satisfied with his agreement, Will watches him go, making no move to try and stop him.

*

Once Will is able to move beyond the bedroom and the bathroom, he takes in the rest of his environment. The remaining rooms downstairs are indeed mid-renovation and unusable. Above, indoor and outdoor seating areas, and a small galley. For a yacht, it is modest.

Will lies down on the upper floor’s corner seating, back propped up against one of the arms. Hannibal is positioned in the same way, his legs flat between Will’s own and the back of the couch. They face each other.

Hannibal proffers a tablet computer. From a glance at the screen, Will sees that an extensive digital library has already been downloaded onto it.

“Will. I would like you to read this, please.”

For a moment, Will expects a news article about them, but it is a heavily annotated edition of a poem. The only pre-existing knowledge of the poem that Will has is that it is considered an important work. Hannibal sits opposite him, watching him intently as Will glances over the words, regularly pausing to scroll down and up between footnotes and the main body of the text. There is silence bar the creak of the boat and the sound of the sea for a long time.

“There is nothing noble in the inaccessible,” he says finally, scathingly. “Although I’m sure you disagree.”

“Ideally, my greatest works would be seen by the world but completely understood only by you. Scholars have poured over this poem, but there is still no consensus on the whole meaning.”

“Defying convenient categorization. Sounds like someone I know.”

Hannibal looks momentarily pleased. “Whether you are describing me or describing yourself, I am flattered. But you are correct – I disagree with you on the poem’s nobility.”

“It’s about the cultural decline of western civilization. You enjoy opera and don’t own a television.”

“Is that what you think it’s about?”

“That’s what the annotations here say it’s about. I know you must agree, otherwise you wouldn’t have given me this edition to look over. Telling me what to think again. You present yourself as a fountain of all knowledge. Reading my fate to me, switching between languages and concepts I do and do not understand so I have no choice but to trust in what you’re saying.”

“So I am the narrative voice? That’s the Fisher King. You fish, Will, but I do not. And you have plenty of water from which to fish.”

“Too much. In my nightmares, I drown in it.”

Hannibal considers him for a moment. Will feels soaked in his gaze.

“In the legend, once the Fisher King falls impotent his lands turn as barren as he does.”

“Do you ever think of who will carry on your legacy?”

“Once, I wanted to be the only person who acts as I do.”

“But that hasn’t been the case for a very long time,” Will says. There must have been other prototypes before him, before Abigail, before Neal Frank.

Hannibal nimbly stretches off the couch, and paces to move behind Will, so he can see the tablet over his shoulder.

“Important differences separate a leader and a follower,” Hannibal says from where Will can’t see him. He hears Hannibal crouch down to get closer to the screen. “And I have had to prematurely end the lives of other candidates. But we are different. The bluff should have shown you; we live together, we die together. The separation you were curious about is not forthcoming.”

Will’s eyes fall over the part of the poem that happens to be showing on-screen.

_But at my back in a cold blast I hear  
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear._

Hannibal’s next words are soft, spoken over Will’s shoulder. Will feels the breath of them on his cheek.

“I understand there once existed cultures where great men’s wives and servants were buried with them so that the dead man would not be alone in the afterlife.”

Will tips his neck back to look at Hannibal. Hannibal’s eyes fall to his throat. “Which one am I, Doctor Lecter? Your wife or your servant?”

Will sees the slight slackening of Hannibal’s mouth, the languid blink of his eyes.

“Wives, when buried alive with their husbands, were not always there of their own free will,” Hannibal says. “But they always had a choice as to whether they loved the man they were trapped with. He must have buried her for a reason.”

“However much he hurt her?”

“However much he hurt her.”

Hannibal, for a moment, looks as if he might sigh. Instead, he stands up, opens the door of a built-in cupboard behind him and takes out his doctor’s bag. “Will. There are many things I do not know. I would have thought you of all people would realize that.”

“I do,” Will replies. “That’s why I said you _present_ yourself as a fountain of all knowledge, not that you really are that way. Go on. Tell me of the Fisher King. It doesn’t say in the notes. What became of him?”

Hannibal sits on the couch again, feet on the floor this time, head turned towards Will. “He could do nothing but wait, perpetually fishing from the river, in the hope that someone would be able to heal him. And they did, in the end. But today it is your turn to heal me.”

Hannibal takes a tourniquet out of the doctor’s bag. He unbuttons Will’s shirt and removes it from Will’s aching shoulders; his fingers brush against Will’s arm as he ties the tourniquet around it. He is as gentle as anyone could be, yet this clemency only stands to further evoke the momentousness of presence that Will associates with Hannibal.

And so Hannibal draws blood from Will once again, this time in the proper way.

*

After a few days more, Will awakens feeling more improved than broken. Hannibal is asleep beside him, sleeping in the position that’s the least painful for his still-healing body. He would not currently – Will understands this even without Hannibal’s medical knowledge – withstand anything too strenuous.

His thoughts spiral because, and not for the first time, he has woken up next to Hannibal hard, but perhaps this is the first time he is feeling well enough to do something about it.

He stares at the ceiling trying to think of other things, but the desire resulting from the embarrassing, thrilling idea of Hannibal waking up and finding him like this beneath their shared sheets distracts him.

In the end, he creeps over to the tiny adjacent bathroom and sits on the closed toilet seat, firmly grips his leaking dick and imagines Hannibal, Hannibal restrained and naked and twisting, overwhelmed, from Will taking his cock in his mouth, Hannibal freed and tasting Will from behind, Hannibal sucking at his skin to mark it all over, until Will bucks up into his fist, biting down on his own mouth to quiet himself, and comes in thick pulses.

Afterwards, his hand hurts.

He cleans up the room and himself, but the smell lingers. God, Hannibal will definitely pick that up, and so Will vows to not do this again, not while they’re in such a confined space and although Hannibal must, _must_ , know some part of how he is feeling, Will hasn’t quite been able to communicate to him in so many words about how he wants their bodies and lives to envelop each other until they are one beast.

It has to be once they land wherever they’re going, Will decides. Not just so their bodies can heal, but so they can sleep in separate rooms if they need the space, so Hannibal can leave him if he wants to, though even just the thought of never seeing Hannibal again is nearly more than Will can bear. 

*

Will is at the galley counter, facing the cupboards as he pours them two drinks of water from the filter jug. The dressing from when he has most recently given blood is visible on his arm. Hannibal is at the hob on the other side of the galley, gently heating tinned stew with discontentment on his face. 

“Did you ever think I was a psychopath, Will?” Hannibal asks conversationally, stirring the stew with a wooden spoon.

Will looks across to him, smiling tightly. “Sounds like something a psychopath would say.”

“Would you care if I was?”

“I think I don’t like labels,” replies Will carefully. “I labeled myself quite narrowly until I first met you.”

“Until you first met me? When I did not interest you?” There is an edge of the theatrically offended.

“Well, not immediately. I didn’t _see_ you then.” 

“When was it, do you think?”

Will looks down at the filled glasses. “Silvestri’s victim, in the ambulance. I wanted you– ”. He breathes in hard, gulps a swallow. “I wanted you to hold my body together like that. I wanted you right underneath my skin.”

He hears the halted stirring of the spoon.

“Or I wanted you to take apart my mind; I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted. But, whatever it was, I wanted it to be you that was doing it to me.”

“I was already taking apart your mind,” Hannibal reminds him. “But you have put it back together most admirably. I did not break you. I improved you.”

Will turns away so that Hannibal can see the remnants of Dolarhyde’s wound. “Here I stand in front of you. _Improved_. Broken, improved – why not both?”

“We have both broken and both improved each other. Do you forget your period of deception so easily?”

“You promised the _Primavera_ would be the first occasion that comes to mind, whatever else happened.”

“It still does. We would not have had a meeting as superlative as that one if you had never betrayed me. Turn around. Look at me.”

Will does so, leaning against the kitchen counter, hands braced for support. Hannibal moves closer, though they are still not touching. They are eye to eye. Hannibal is still stitched and bandaged, but is beginning to look dangerous again.

Hannibal smiles gently. “Like a butterfly pinned between my fingers.”

“ _Butterfly?_ ” Will scoffs.

“A moth, if you prefer,” says Hannibal, the implied shrug potent in his tone.

“Like a moth to a flame.”

“Or a dog to a bone”, Hannibal says, clean and cruel and kind, and pressures the hot stretch between his thumb and forefinger against the front of Will’s neck.

Will’s mouth falls open. He feels his lips push out a gasp and then fall silent, feels blood rushing around his body as he meets Hannibal’s hard gaze. He has to breathe in hard to get enough air. It is so much like falling to the bottom of the ocean that the smell of the cooking pot fades away; he feels the salt stinging his wounds instead, sees the bones.

Rather than feeling close to death he feels calm, because he knows that once again strong arms will pull him upwards.

Hannibal lets go, face as implacable as ever, but in the gloam of the dark boat Will would swear he sees the slight parting of his lips.

“I have already drowned once,” Will rasps. He is hard, and Hannibal is pretending not to notice, and Will is being driven slightly mad by it.

Overhead, there is the sound of thunder. They must not be caught in the storm.

“You’ll tear your stitches,” Will says. The boat is rocking, and he can hear rain. “I will go above deck.”

*

The morning after the storm, their anchor drops and they wade to dry land. It is summer.

“We have crossed the equator,” Hannibal informs Will somewhat unnecessarily, as a light sheen of sweat covers Will’s forehead; they are climbing up a sandbank, towards a forest. “This has been a popular country in the past for those hiding from arrest, but I doubt we shall be bothered here. As long as we keep our guest in line.”

“Guest?” Will grimaces into the shade of the green trees, feet unsure on firm ground after such a journey at sea. They had ended their voyage earlier than he had expected they would, and the soft soil and smell of fresh grass are reminding him uncomfortably of the home life he has left behind. The news of a guest is a significant shock; visions of continuing to have Hannibal all to himself, of his planned, solitary seduction, crumble like dust in their new impossibility.

“For the moment. I had to have someone find me suitable accommodation,” Hannibal says cheerfully, and they head up the stony path they are on together.

*

Night has fallen when they reach a large, well-appointed house, deep in the woods. A four-wheel-drive car is parked outside it. Next to the car is a woman, and Will wonders how he could have thought it would have been anyone else.

“I am here to stop you killing each other,” says Bedelia Du Maurier, wearing a golden dress and a tiny smile.


	2. Chapter 2

Hannibal smiles, then kisses Bedelia’s hand. She leads him through the front door of the house as if she is the hostess of a well-attended party. Will follows them with stout, seething steps. 

They step into a pristine kitchen. An onion sits on a chopping board, a sharp silver knife to its side, and further ingredients are resting on the countertop. Hannibal immediately picks up the knife and begins chopping, a starved but careful man.

Will and Bedelia have to communicate with each other on the far side of the kitchen, in murmurs. It reminds Will of when he was behind bars.

“Have you chosen to meet him here?” Will asks.

“I have the appearance of free will,” Bedelia says, looking at Will like he’s a bug she’d deeply like to trap and suffocate under a glass.

“You have chosen to meet him here. And you have chosen in the past to leave. I can’t understand you.” 

“You are here with him. And you have been with him and without him.”

“I didn’t have a choice!”

“Oh, your choice came at a different time to mine,” says Bedelia. “But you still had a choice.”

Will’s hands clench, unclench. He wants to sleep for a very long time, almost as much as he wants to stretch Hannibal across the kitchen wall and kiss him raw.

“Who are we? If anyone sees us,” Will says.

“That’s up to Hannibal. It won’t be like when we were in Florence. Three people living together like we will appear to do is more transgressive, and therefore more likely to attract attention.”

“There might not be three of us for much longer,” Will manages to add, watching the narrowing of Bedelia’s eyes.

“No,” Bedelia says, just as steam rises over whatever Hannibal has started cooking. “There might not.”

*

“Gemelli in a tomato ragù,” says Hannibal. “The best I could do under the circumstances, until we can find a better source of supplies, but far better than any of the sub-standard fare Will and I have had to endure on our voyage.”

“What’s the meat?” says Will, despite himself. He knows what it isn’t.

“A Patagonian mara,” Bedelia says. “It was lost.”

They eat politely, Hannibal enquiring after Bedelia’s wellbeing and running through his plans for Bedelia’s collected ingredients. Will chews his (delicious) meal and stays silent. This measured refinement involving restrained conversations with people other than themselves; this is one thing Will had thought they’d be escaping from.

It transpires there are exactly three bedrooms, and considering he had previously thought it of paramount importance that he and Hannibal had the choice to each claim their own space he feels a blow to progress when he excuses himself and retires to his designated quarters. Through the open window, he can hear the wind through the trees.

He has begun undoing the top buttons of his shirt to undress for bed when Hannibal materializes as if from nowhere and shuts the bedroom door behind him.

“When is she going to go?” Will hisses into the near darkness.

“Will… some logistical assistance was required. If we let her go she might put us in danger.”

“I just… I thought we would be alone, is all.”

“Is that what you want?” Hannibal says, quite seriously. “We have had the help we needed now. We can’t let her go, but it can be arranged for us to be alone.”

“Don’t,” Will says, mind reeling from the dangerous glint in Hannibal’s eyes – close to him, now, but they are still not touching.

Something else glints in the room. It’s the knife; Hannibal still has it in his hand. “Why would you mention how you feel, Will, if you don’t want me to act on it?”

Will opens his mouth to formulate some sort of reply, but he is prevented from speaking by a loud crash from downstairs, like a cast iron saucepan hitting flagstones.

Hannibal dashes back away from Will and out of the room to investigate, and Will can’t shake the feeling that the dropping of the saucepan was not an accident.

*

Hannibal has brought his tablet from the boat. Will finds he has very little to do with his time, not having Hannibal’s undivided attention. On their journey here, it had felt as though a move to a sexual relationship was so inevitable that he had barely noticed the way they had kept so physically close to each other. Now, the way Hannibal is holding himself back, not touching him, sleeping in a different room, flares anger within him.

Nor are there many household chores to perform, or anything broken to fix. The house, filled with the usual opulence, is pristine.

When supplies start running low, Bedelia repeatedly asks Will to accompany her to the nearest village until he eventually accepts out of sheer suspicion. Hannibal shows no signs of suspicion himself in watching them both leave, which means that he trusts Will not to free Bedelia.

They get in the car and drive out of the trees, charging out of the darkness and into sunlight like a rabbit chased from its warren.

They park and walk to a market stall selling fresh fruit and vegetables. Bedelia asks for items with the Spanish words for them, no accompanying sentence construction, no gesticulations to add meaning to her foreign pronunciation. They pose as a husband and wife who hate each other.

“We could conspire against Hannibal,” she murmurs as they walk back towards where the car is parked. “No-one knows him better. We could kill him.” Hannibal could take the place of Dolarhyde, caught in the middle and taken down. They would make sure his death was beautiful.

“But you don’t want him to die, do you?” says Bedelia. “Even if his death saves the lives of many others.”

Will, confronted with this monstrous truth, gives a tiny contorted shake of his head.

“And he would save your life with the deaths of as many as it took.”

“Killing is no hardship for Hannibal,” Will says, voice approaching adoring.

“Neither for you, it seems,” Bedelia says. “Not while he’s there beside you. A matrimonial act. I think one kind of consummation is enough to be getting on with, don’t you?”

They had killed Dolarhyde together. After that, nothing was between them: no lies, no law, no Jack Crawford, no great red dragon. Nothing separated them. Nothing to stop them from killing each other. Or doing anything else to each other.

“Has he started washing your hair and feeding you oysters?” Bedelia asks.

Will feels a potent stab of jealousy, imagining Hannibal’s long fingers in Bedelia’s water-darkened hair instead of his, imagining Hannibal preparing food for her in their beautiful Florentine apartment. He cannot bring himself to even envisage their potential consummation. 

“He hasn’t, no.” Will manages to meet her eyes.

Bedelia does not speak for a long time. “Then you are as safe as safe can be,” she finally says.

Once they are back in the car and driving home, Will tells her, “You aren’t safe at all.”

“Is that a threat, or a statement of fact?”

“A warning.”

“If I leave, you will destroy each other,” Bedelia says. “You cannot mend each other, so you violently break apart instead.”

“You have managed to leave him more times than anyone. More times than I have. But you keep coming back.”

“I am willing to sacrifice myself to keep you and Hannibal apart forever,” Bedelia says waspishly, hand flexing on the stick shift. “I am too entwined in the situation to live an ordinary life. I generally aim for self-preservation, but if I was pulled off a clifftop I would make sure my skull cracked open on the rocks below.”

“I planned for us both to die. It was the only morally upright thing to do.”

“And your actions now?”

“If we’d died, we would have journeyed south to hell,” Will says. “And if I’m in hell, I figure I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

“Your wild transparency is not becoming of you,” Bedelia says, and after that they sit in silence for the rest of their journey.

*

Will tries to find moments where he can seduce Hannibal (he has done it before, after all, so he knows how to), but Bedelia always manages to find the optimum moment to enter the room, and he never gets as far as telling Hannibal anything. He senses that Hannibal knows what he’s attempting, a smile sometimes edging out from underneath his fixed expression, but it is clear: Hannibal is waiting for him to make the leading move, and isn’t going to do it for him. And Hannibal is a patient man.

“This house has no cellar,” Will says to Hannibal one afternoon, as Hannibal thinly slices a rump cut for their dinner. Bedelia is close by, as ever, sitting at the kitchen table with her hand over her eyes, nursing a migraine. Will is not sure whether she can overhear him or not.

 _It wouldn’t matter what she overheard if you let Hannibal do what he wanted to her_ , a tiny voice starts up in his head, and his heart goes _thud thud thud_ as he thinks about the silver knife in Hannibal’s large, strong hands.

“I am aware,” Hannibal says. “I am making a _rindsrouladen_ , with a few twists of my own creation. The beef here is of such a high quality, I intend to make the most of it.”

“Staying off anything stronger?”

Hannibal stops slicing to turn to Will and give him his full attention. It still feels like being assailed by something wonderful.

“It would not be a wise idea at this time; it would arouse suspicion. Would you prefer it if I stopped completely?”

“You know I would,” Will says quietly, not meaning to sound so tender. “But I don’t know whether you could. It might be like telling me to stop perceiving other people’s kills as my own.”

Hannibal moves to stand close, very close, to Will, looking at him like he’s a wonder, and Will has to breathe hard to concentrate on what Hannibal is saying. His stomach jumps.

“If I do stop,” says Hannibal. “What do I get from you in return?”

“ _God_ ,” whispers Will, leaning through the final tiny gap that exists between their faces, lips parted–

Bedelia scrapes the wooden chair she sits in against the hard stone floor as she arises.

Will’s knees nearly buckle with the strain of Hannibal’s swift stepping back from him.

“You’d be surprised by what I can sacrifice, Will,” Hannibal says, as though their most recent exchange had never happened. Will watches Bedelia’s slow circumnavigation of the kitchen, circling her prey. “There was a time, after my first residency in Florence, when I had to flee. It was necessary for me to hide out in the forests of Slovenia for months. I lived like a savage.”

“And, ultimately, would you still rather forgo every other luxury than live a normal life without murder?” Will manages to respond, despite the distracting coil of arousal within him from their closeness moments ago.

“No-one gets to live a life without death. I find it better to be in control of causing it as much as is possible.”

Bedelia’s fingers, part way through combing through her hair, momentarily pause in their downward movement, but her click of her shoes on each step continues.

“In any case,” Hannibal says. “We are past the turning point on which that decision can be made. I have already accrued a lifetime of incarceration. It could be mandated at any time, unless we are all very careful.”

“And even then,” Bedelia says, one hand still in her hair, the other hand neatly placed across her heart. Hannibal’s expression remains unchanged but he turns to her instead of Will, food preparation forgotten, and Will feels forgotten too, and in that moment he is so desperate to be alone with Hannibal, unencumbered, that his fingers twitch towards the drawer that holds the silver knife. 

Bedelia is not faking the migraine, it seems; she looks tired and miserable, yet as cold in countenance as ever. She makes him twitch with hatred, for knowing him, for being here, for inviting her own death and yet making it far from easy.

Will grabs the cutlery Hannibal has already laid out to set the dining room table with and strides away, the hard stone floor remaining bloodless and clean.

* 

Later, when Bedelia has fallen asleep on a couch in the living room, Will and Hannibal sneak away and sit next to each other in the house’s dark dining room, eyes on gleaming silver plates, inedible remnants of their earlier meal still on the table. Will wonders how many recipes Hannibal tried before he started creating his own.

“You must have learned from others,” Will says. “Got ideas.”

“Robert Walton listening to Victor Frankenstein’s tale.”

“Remind me.”

“The framing device. He recognized in Frankenstein a fellow man who wanted fame for his discoveries, and a fellow man who wanted for the company of an equal.”

Will thinks of the scars under his clothes. “And I am the monster.”

“Never. I will reaffirm to you, Will. I did not create you.”

“All the parts of Frankenstein’s creature existed already, but he still had to animate them.”

“Do you fancy me a mad scientist? Frankenstein was a scholar in natural philosophy from an early age. He was dissatisfied with the conclusions on the scientific world that his contemporaries had drawn, so he made studies of his own.”

“How is the teacup looking these days?” Will asks Hannibal.

“It is in surprisingly good health,” Hannibal replies softly. Will reaches forward and lays his fingers over Hannibal’s knuckles.

“The monster was shunned, wasn’t he?” Will says, eyes unflinchingly meeting Hannibal’s own. “Misunderstood?”

“Frankenstein’s monster saves a young girl from drowning. The girl’s father’s response is to shoot him. It is not the beast who is evil. It is the everyday people.”

“And the beast’s creator.”

“Perhaps monsters should not trouble themselves with trying to integrate themselves into the real world.”

“They should hide in houses in the woods,” Will says, fingers clenching tighter against Hannibal’s. “And quietly carry out their sins.”

Will’s eyes fall to the base of Hannibal’s throat as Hannibal swallows, once.

“Bedelia is asleep upstairs,” Will says.

“Nothing will happen while Bedelia is here, Will,” Hannibal responds. “She disapproves.”

“Since when did you care about people disapproving of you?”

“It would be rude.”

“Then send her on her merry way.” His fingers unclench now, drum against the dining room table.

“You know we can’t risk telling anyone where we are.”

“Hannibal. I want you inside me,” Will murmurs, eyes on his again. “Inside my head and inside my body at the same time, completely each other’s. _Nothing else._ ”

Hannibal looks as if he’s drowning in Will’s gaze, and Will smiles in quiet victory.

“I will have to get rid of her, then,” Hannibal says simply.

“Do what you must, _Il Mostro_ ,” Will says. “You’re not the renouncing type.” 

*

The next time Will joins Bedelia in the car, they are driving further out this time, to buy a wider variety of more unusual foods and flowers from the nearest town of substantive size. He feels lines of tension through his body from his anger.

“You’re stopping us from… from… ” Will makes a wavering gesticulation with one hand nothing like the action he is attempting to describe, but he is fully aware Bedelia is conscious of what he’s alluding to without further specification.

“The moment you and Hannibal physically become lovers, there is no barrier at all. It will end in both your deaths, I’m sure of it.”

“No matter; I think that’s what everybody wants,” Will says savagely. “Take off your psychiatrist’s mask and there’s only another mask underneath, Doctor Du Maurier. Nevertheless, put your profession aside and mind your own business.”

“I told you I was here to stop you killing each other,” Bedelia says. “And if you get any closer to him, Hannibal will have succeeded in something which I have been trying to stop him doing for a long time.”

“Which is?”

“He will have won,” Bedelia sighs. “Hannibal will have found a person in the world who ultimately required no light therapy or psychological trickery to become his other half. I used to regularly tell him that person did not exist. And yes here you are, sitting right beside me.”

“If I could, in one way or another, make him happy. That might be what calms the most destructive side of his serial nature.”

“It’s not your flesh he’s interested in,” Bedelia says. “He wants your heart kept beating. He wants complete control of your mind.”

“He had complete control of my mind. And then he lost it. But he didn’t lose me. If we are conjoined in mind, our bodies should surely follow.” Will smiles. “I can think of one use of flesh where the heart is kept beating very fast indeed.”

“You are in love,” Bedelia says. “You are already closer to Hannibal than I feared another person could ever get to him, but that doesn’t mean I have to make your lives blissfully easy.”

“You only told me that Hannibal was in love with me.”

“I did not need to tell you how you yourself felt.”

“I was under the impression that was the entire point of psychiatry,” Will grumbles. “My apologies.”

“I did not tell you. I asked you to tell me. I asked you of aching. You did not answer, which in itself functioned as your response.”

They reach a junction, close to where the road turns to dirt track as it enters the woods. It’s a left hand turn to get there. Bedelia applies the brake and turns to Will.

“What would you do, Will Graham, if I turned us right? Made for the nearest police station, or the airport? Would you kill me?”

“I don’t think so,” Will replies. “I think I’d keep you alive and take you home to him. But I wouldn’t want to find out.”

“How sweet you still want me around,” Bedelia says as she clicks on the left hand turn signal.

*

When they return, Hannibal takes their bagged purchases from their hands and asks if Will and Bedelia will change for dinner.

Amused, Will goes to his bedroom and picks out a crisp blue shirt and black slacks from the selection he found here when he had first arrived. He goes back downstairs and goes to find Hannibal, then in his apparent absence waits alone in the hall.

A short while later, Bedelia glides downstairs in an elegant black gown with a low neck designed to provoke comment. Will makes none and, wishing to be away from Bedelia for as long as possible, moves towards the dining room.

At that moment, Will is slammed into the wall, away from Bedelia, by considerable human force. When he next looks up, to see what has happened to her, she has been knocked unconscious. Hannibal is holding her upright. 

“An observing participant – a passive participant – is not a good thing to be, Will,” Hannibal says, ever so slightly out of breath. “That makes you the victim, however willing. Are you alright?”

Gently, he lowers her body down until she is lying on her back on the hallway floor.

“It hurts a little between my shoulders, where I hit the wall,” Will says. “But I think the pain will soon subside.”

“We could consume her piece by piece,” Hannibal says, looking down at Bedelia. “Slowly, to savor it. Until there is nothing left of her and there is only you and me. That is what you want, isn’t it?”

“I don’t… If I start thinking about anyone else outside of you… I _need_ you,” Will says, feeling the break in his voice upon the word _need_ run deep within him. “I want _nothing_ else. You leave no room for anyone else. You can only be truly enjoyed in isolation. Whether we let Bedelia go or we kill her, another obstacle will come to replace her. You spend hours finding food combinations. What do you eat that exists singularly?”

“I rarely serve anything unadorned. The ortolan is consumed whole and without decoration.”

“And you are, certainly, an endangered species.”

“Many tell me a true gentleman is hard to find these days.”

Will gives a tiny laugh as he sees in his mind’s eye ungentlemanly blood of previous sins smeared across Hannibal’s face, as he turns to Bedelia’s unmoving eyes.

Hannibal’s doctor’s bag is once again present. Reverently, like a gentleman, Hannibal kneels in front of her, lifts the long slit in the skirt of her dress to the side and pushes a needle into her skin.

“She will be under a local anesthetic,” Hannibal says. “This way, I aim to create a more disconcerting experience. Will you be an active participant, Will?”

“I will be neither observing nor participating. I asked you to act; I don’t need to watch.”

“In that case,” Hannibal says, “take a walk through the forest. It will work up your appetite, and you will not be underfoot.”

“I promise to return,” says Will, solemnly. Bedelia looks dead, but Will knows she isn’t yet.

“You will experience the crime as your own, in any case,” Hannibal says, looking up him from his crouched position on the ground. “Return to the dining room when this is all over. Close your eyes, and you will have no choice but to feel complicit.”

Will locks the door firmly on his way out.

*

Will turns to go back the way he came as the sun begins to set. He paces between the relative shade of the trees, feeling bereft without a dog or three to join him; his steps are too quiet to drown out the noise of the bone saw ringing through his head. How many lives did Hannibal save as a surgeon? Is it that or his tally of kills which is the higher number?

When he gets back inside, he locks himself in. Hannibal comes to him in the kitchen, wearing dress pants, a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a tie. There is no blood on his hands.

“There is still the matter of dinner,” Hannibal says.

“What exactly have you prepared?”

“I have set the table. Come and see.”

They creep to the entrance to the dining room and Will takes in the scene before him.

“She’s still alive?” Will whispers furiously as they move away again, back towards the kitchen.

“She sits,” Hannibal says as he closes the kitchen door. “Her mind is clouded.”

“Love can cloud the mind, too. I would have thought that was exactly what you wanted out of me.”

“Will,” Hannibal chides. “I thought you had become better at forgiving.”

“Your inconvenient compassion for me sometimes sounded a little too much like pity. Not love.”

“I do not pity you, Will. I told you once that our teacup couldn’t be fixed.”

“Instead, broken and improved.”

“An unbroken teacup is a vessel,” Hannibal says, low and steady. It makes Will draw ever closer towards him with little thought powering the action. “It will hold whatever is poured into it. Once broken, it cannot hold anymore. It is broken, but it is its own thing. It exists on its own terms.”

“No. It will be linked inextricably with whoever broke it.”

Close as they are, Hannibal does not have to reach far to slide four fingers against the back of Will’s neck, thumb cradled between his cheek and his ear. “Nevertheless,” Hannibal says. “The breaking is the improving.”

Hannibal looks so powerful and determined, looking right at Will, Bedelia perhaps almost forgotten. Will imagines their mouths meeting, Hannibal’s other hand trailing over his chest downwards, long fingers reaching for his belt buckle and undoing it, slowly, deftly working around the straining bulge in his pants. He breathes in hard as he hears his heart thump, and heat floods below his abdomen.

“Is this why you needed all the food you sent us out for?” Will mutters, trying to distract himself. Hannibal doesn’t move away. No third person enters the room to interrupt them.

“Yes,” Hannibal says. “And I sent you outside to spare you from hearing the sound of the saw, although in time I would like us to resume working alongside each other. I had already got you and Bedelia to buy everything I needed for this particular dish earlier today. Almost everything, I should say.”

“You’ve made it so beautiful.”

“A feast. Will you join me?”

“You never coerce. So, persuade.” Will’s breath hitches.

“Do I need to? You seem amenable already.” Hannibal moves his hips forward very slightly, so that the front of his pants just touches Will’s erection. His neck feels so warm under Hannibal’s hand.

“I’ll eat willingly and knowingly. If you let me kiss you.”

“Are we not above bargaining?” Hannibal asks, his eyes dark.

“Not if it’s something we both want.”

The final move is made by both of them together.

Their lips slide together at last, and he can feel Hannibal’s rapid heartbeat against his own chest. Both of Hannibal’s hands are now wrapped gently around his neck. It anchors him to this moment, with only one background consideration.

“Are the windows in the dining room locked? Did you leave any knives, any knives in there?” Will gasps in between kisses, as he rubs himself against Hannibal, whose back is against the kitchen wall, and within him Will feels the heat rise further.

“Just spoons and forks,” Hannibal replies, short of breath, one hand moving up to Will’s hair as the other spreads wide over Will’s lower back. “Forks for the oysters. And everything’s locked. She is extremely drugged, I assure you. However, this means we cannot leave her alone in the room for long.” With a moan, he kisses Will deeply, filling his mouth, before breaking away. “Either we must stop or we carry on, but quickly.”

“Oh god, quickly then. I need– ”

“What do you want, Will?”

“Everything,” Will murmurs, running his hands down Hannibal’s sides, through his shirt, then, with a spike of lust, he pulls out Hannibal’s shirt tails and feels him skin-to-skin instead. The tie stays done up. “To do everything.”

“We don’t have time for everything, but we will, so soon,” Hannibal says thickly. “Perhaps you would like to wait?” As he is saying this, his hand splays over Will’s cock, two frustrating layers of clothing separating their skin. The movement draws Will’s sightline to the front of Hannibal’s pants where he, too, shows signs of a trapped, aching erection. He doesn’t act like a man who could wait.

“Please, Hannibal,” Will says. “I can’t wait. And I want her to _know_.”

He moves so that it is him against the wall instead, and pushes Hannibal downwards onto the floor before he has really fully considered the implication, and Hannibal’s knees fold elegantly, but Will doesn’t want him to be elegant, he wants him to be spit-slick, choking, hair out of its style. Hannibal’s hands fumble at the front of Will’s pants. He tugs them down along with the waistband of his boxers to free Will’s cock, flushed a deep red and messy at the tip. Hannibal licks his lips, and it makes Will moan.

They should take the time to fully undress each other. They should make love on a bed, slowly and beautifully. They should wait to do all of this, after the meal. But Will has waited long enough.

Will thinks of Bedelia’s most contemptuous face as he pushes into Hannibal’s soft, tight mouth, and then he thinks of not very much at all.

“Quick,” Will says, and then he groans long and low as he pushes past the opening of Hannibal’s throat. Sweat prickles at the base of his spine; they’re essentially fully clothed, but Hannibal seems to have little regard for what he’s wearing as he sucks hard and tight, a blissful expression on his face.

“I love seeing you like this,” Will pants out, as Hannibal pulls his mouth up Will’s cock and pays careful attention to the head, before taking him deeply again. “Seems I’m holding all your attention now.”

Hannibal pulls his mouth off completely. “Always, Will,” he says looking up at Will, gasping, his hair falling in front of his eyes. “Completely.” Hands to either side of Will’s thighs, he leverages himself so that he takes Will to the base. Guiding one of Will’s hands to the back of his head, the other to his jaw, he stills his movements, and Will takes in his meaning, feeling an overwhelming sensation of desire as he steadily fucks Hannibal’s mouth and Hannibal lets him.

“I’m close, I’m close,” Will says, breathing hard, as he feels his body tighten, orgasm rushing towards him; then he feels, against the palm of his hand across Hannibal’s jaw, Hannibal hollow out his cheeks. Will gives a great gasp of breath as he comes down Hannibal’s throat.

Hannibal gets up from the floor to face Will head on as Will slumps against the wall. Hannibal’s lips are full and shiny, and some of Will’s come that he couldn’t swallow gleams from his chin.

Will bites through his own release to tug at Hannibal’s bottom lip with his teeth. Hannibal looks half gone already, his eyes bright.

Will twists their positions around again and slams Hannibal into the wall behind him, kissing him to taste himself on Hannibal. He’d meant to sink to his knees for payment in kind, but instead he finds himself undoing Hannibal’s pants, reaching through Hannibal’s underwear and wrapping his hand around Hannibal’s thick, leaking cock. Hannibal gives out a sigh as he is finally touched by Will, and he looks across to Will from lidded eyes.

“We’re in each other’s blood,” Will murmurs, watching for Hannibal’s reaction. “You'll never get me out.”

Will squeezes more tightly – Hannibal gives out a low groan – and starts to move his grip up and down, watching Hannibal thrust up into his touch with a dizzying satisfaction.

“I– I continued the transfusions for longer than I should have,” Hannibal says. “I liked the idea of our blood intermingling with each other’s.”

“I know,” Will says, his hand now at a fast and steady pace. “That’s the difference now. I knew but did not stop you.”

Hannibal, looking far-gone, moans again, pushes up into Will’s hand. Will’s stomach plummets as he looks straight into Hannibal’s eyes and sees the full extent to which Hannibal is failing to be calculating.

“ _Will_ ,” Hannibal grunts, as Will further speeds up the motion of his grip. Just as he bites down where Will’s neck meets his shoulder, Hannibal’s body tenses and he comes with a quiet, choked-off sound. His release spills over his foreskin and covers Will’s hand. Some gets on Will’s shirt.

Urgency momentarily forgotten, they slump, spent, on the floor. Will takes a tissue from his pocket and wipes his hand clean, but makes no move to tidy up Hannibal’s face. As their breathing returns to a usual level, Will sits embraced by Hannibal’s arms. 

“I don’t want you to kill her,” Will says, letting the words fall in the quiet of the room.

“What do you want?” Hannibal asks him.

“I want you to stop killing and to stop consuming your kills, but still to be yourself.”

“You may as well ask me to fly to the moon.”

“I was under the impression,” Will says, giving a quick grin, “that you could fly to the moon. It was just a matter of my asking.”

“Some things are fundamental. Gravitational pull is a good example. Our natures are another.”

“I don’t want us to be discovered. Once we are discovered, we will be separated. Nobody kills quite like you do, Hannibal.”

Hannibal leans down to give Will a quick, strong open-mouthed kiss, and Will knows Hannibal is grateful for what he would take as flattery.

“Then we shall get rid of the evidence.” With one large hand, he touches Will’s abdomen under his shirt so that his meaning is obvious.

“There is no true nature,” Will says, looking away from Hannibal and outwards to the dark room. “Only actions, and then what happens after them.”

“Even the courts take a look at motivation.”

Silence ticks on as they hold onto each other.

“It won’t give me the usual pleasure to kill her,” Hannibal admits. “I took her leg to stop her running away. Taking her life will be harder.”

“You don’t get to choose,” Will says, looking up at Hannibal again. Hannibal looks back at him sharply, then softens in the face of Will’s calm assuredness. “Not when you bring us both here and you want me to stay.”

They kiss again, tasting the same as each other; another thrill through the hot room.

“I have not always been happy when I am with you,” Will says, once they have at last broken apart. “But I have been sad without you. Or at least bereft.”

“The opposite of sadness is happiness.”

“I prefer to think the opposite of sadness is peace.”

“I must disagree. I aim to always be occupied, and feel dulled when I am not busy.”

“There is a peace to be found in activity. Fixing up the house in Maine. Walking the dogs. Peace is not the same as inaction.”

“And now?” Hannibal says. “How do you feel about me?”

“Many things,” Will replies, smiling again. “But I now believe I will be happiest with you, and you alone. Isolated. Contained.”

“Then we must go back to the dining room now,” Hannibal says. “For dinner.”

“Will the drugs have worn off?”

“No. But I should check her, make sure she is not in any immediate danger. And we would not want the food to grow cold.” The last part said so politely; the charming host, only Will knows now the truth of the facade because he knows of all the lies behind it. As if he is standing in a maze of mirrors and has managed to find the true being in amongst all the false reflections.

He is in Hannibal’s arms, and so, inevitably, his mind is dashed back to the cliff, and then the boat. He thinks of the wind at their faces as they fell, the chill of the sea. Now, sweat gleams on their bodies. The heat of the room stretches in the silence.

“We were for so long out in the cold,” Hannibal says.

“ _Winter kept us warm_ ,” Will remembers from the poem, and Hannibal’s face contorts with virulent desire.

The copied, customized works of art, the poetry, the well-considered prose. The symbolism in every one of Hannibal’s kills. It all meant something, and it all lead to something.

“And what does this symbolize?” Will continues lightly. “Who are we now?”

“Symbolism, backed up by action, has led to this moment. We now symbolize nothing but ourselves, and our acts in and of themselves. I would hope that there are no more hidden meanings between us, Will.”

He says it looking so deeply into Will’s eyes that Will would feel an intense pang of anxious guilt if he had anything left to hide from Hannibal. As it stands, he merely feels peaceful.

“Bedelia will be waiting for us to return,” Hannibal says.

Peace is what Will thinks of now, in Hannibal’s arms inside the quiet house. Even if there is a fight, a struggle, Hannibal will find a way out, just like he planned the motor yacht, just like how he pulled Will upwards with strong arms.

Bedelia is waiting for them, piece by piece.

**Author's Note:**

> _Oed' und leer das Meer_
> 
> \- _The Waste Land_ , T. S. Eliot ( _Tristan und Isolde_ , Richard Wagner)
> 
>    
>  _I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plan._  
>  \- _Frankenstein_ , Mary Shelley
> 
>  
> 
> [ Hannibal’s yacht was very loosely based on this model.](http://www.boattest.com/review/hatteras/2039_60-motor-yacht)
> 
>  
> 
> [My tumblr.](http://wreathedwith.tumblr.com/)


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